


So, Slip Your Hand Inside Of My Glove

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories [2]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer
Genre: Canon - Comics, Gen, Ghosts, generally disturbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one type of cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So, Slip Your Hand Inside Of My Glove

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the kind Anon who gave me the idea to re-tell the Hellblazer story, "Hold Me", by Neil Gaiman, in the same style as I did "In Another Part Of Hell", adapting it to Constantine's setting and character dynamics. Instead of taking place in London in 1990, it takes place in New York in the early part of the last decade, when John would have been about twenty-two. I changed a couple of minor plot points, but this story is pretty faithful to Gaiman's original work; in some places, lines are quoted verbatim.  
> The title comes from the Fleetwood Mac song, Hold Me.  
> I have nothing to with Hellblazer, Constantine, Fleetwood Mac, or much of anything. Nobody pays me to do this. Don't try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

“You said you'd explain to me what you meant when you said that New York got too weird for you.”  
“I said that was a story for another time.”  
Zed sits down at the kitchen table, rests her chin in her hands. “I've got time.”  
John sighs. “I've got a better idea: how about a ghost story?”  
“A ghost story?” She raises her eyebrows skeptically.  
“Yeah.” He sits down across from her. “It'll take you back to your days as a Girl Guide.” He lights a cigarette. “Even got a camp fire.”  
“I was never a Girl Scout.”  
“Did some camping, though, didn't you?”  
“Some,” she replies softly.  
“You don't want to talk about that, though. I don't want to talk about why I left New York. This is a compromise. It'll be entertaining,” he says gamely.  
She smiles. “All right.”  
“Have you ever felt the cold?”  
“Yeah. Of course I have.”  
He shakes his head. “No. You haven't.” He lifts the bottle. “Light your fire? No? More for me.”

Imagine being out in the cold. All the time. You can't go in, because there is no 'in'.  
(“Like you're homeless?”)  
Homeless, yeah- but beyond that. You've been without a home for so long that the concept, the possibility of it is beyond you. We have a romanticized view of vagabonds, of travelers, and it can be romantic. If you've chosen it. There's nothing romantic about being thrown away. Because your Mummy and Daddy didn't love you, or didn't love you once they found out who you really are. Because you did your bit, for whatever master you chose or were assigned, and you're used-up or damaged beyond use. Or you were born broken, and no one bothered to try to fix you. Or they tried, but all that trying just did more damage.  
The truth, love, is that people don't care.  
(“That's not true.”)  
Yes, it is. People try to care, because it's a laugh, or because they want to think that they're good, but it wears you down. It doesn't mean you're evil; it just means you're weak. Some would say that it's the human condition: weak flesh wrapped around weak spirit. It's nothing to be ashamed of; it's just-  
(“Sad?”)  
I was going to say 'the way it is'.  
So, you're out in the cold. It's cold that doesn't end, until the spring comes. But you're in it so much, you start to look on it the way they did in the old days: the cold only ends if the sun wins its battle in the Underworld and is born again. And when the world ends, it won't be in fire, but in ice.  
The cold isn't just physical; it can be spiritual, it can get into your soul and your heart. You can try to block out the physical cold; you can shelter yourself from it; you can numb yourself to it; you can ignore it. If the howling wind is inside, though, how do you shelter yourself from it?  
Fat Ronnie and Sylvia from Newark were out in the cold. With them, was Jack. They were all together under an overpass in Williamsburg when they were roused. They had a few minutes' warning before the authorities showed up, and they picked up stakes and ran. Eventually, they found an abandoned flat in a building that should have been condemned. It was almost colder inside than out, but at least it was enclosed. Fat Ronnie and Sylvia from Newark tore down an ancient curtain from a broken window, wrapped around each other and wrapped themselves up in it. Jack, however, was on his own. He had nowhere to hide from the cold, no one to hide in, but he still found a way.  
The cold gets in everywhere. It's like water. If you're in the ocean, you can't avoid getting wet. Winter's the ocean on land, in solid form, where we have to walk through it. And it swallows us, chews us with teeth of ice.  
It makes you ugly. Even beautiful people are ugly in the winter. A cabbie said something to me like that, once. He was talking a lot of bollocks about beautiful women being scarce in the winter, like butterflies. You never see a butterfly in the winter. You'll see the occasional moth, of course, and a moth's just a butterfly with bad P.R.. I was thinking that when he suddenly started in on the old 'send them back' shite- it was jarring. I'd heard enough of it back home; I knew it existed here, but I thought, well-  
(“That this was the land of the free and the home of the brave?”)  
Something like that. After a while, I couldn't take it anymore, so I got out and walked the rest of the way. I paid him with pieces of paper enchanted to look like money, but I still didn't give him a tip. Sometimes, you have too much contempt for someone even to lie to them.  
It was a funny kind of night. I was on my way to a do held in honor of a friend of mine, Ray Monde, on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of his death. I met Ray almost as soon as I came to the city; next to Chas, he was my oldest friend in America. And, now, he was dead. Like a lot of people, around that time.  
(“Because of-”)  
No. Not that. He liked a party, so everyone thought it was the best way to celebrate his memory. I was almost there when someone called to me, from the shadows. It was this little geezer, wanting a fag. I gave him one, and he told me he'd been sleeping rough. He had a few friends, they were all looking out for each other, but he'd had a nasty run-in with some slumming rich kids. I gave him some change and a few fags. You'd have thought I'd offered him the keys to a flat in the Upper East Side, he was so grateful. For the stuff, but also just to speak to someone, when he was feeling alone.  
But it was nothing to me. I was on my way to a party full of my friends, and this was just a chance encounter. It's like anything else- like warmth, like money: it's relative. You see enough of any of it, and a little bit isn't going to mean much, coming in or going out. I went on to the party. The host introduced me to a young woman, called Anthea. Means 'flower' in Greek.  
(“I knew that.”)  
Of course you did. Like the rest of us, she was a friend of Ray's. Nice enough girl, pretty, but somehow, I didn't feel it. The night was young, so were we, but I'd come over all gloomy. Funny how that can happen, all of a sudden. They say that it's someone walking on your grave. Maybe it's you walking on somebody else's.  
If you think about it, everywhere is someone's grave.  
(“Wow. Morbid.”)  
It's true, though. Every moment is someone's last. Someone could be dying, right now.  
(“Okay, no more booze for you.”)  
S'not the booze, love. It's just life.  
(“Well, those of us who like to get through the day without wanting to slit our wrists don't usually think about it that way.”)  
Probably better, in the long run.  
(“It's part of my five-step plan for success.”)  
You'll have to tell me the other four steps some time. It's queer to think of, is all- as we were all at a party, celebrating the life of a friend that had recently ended, the whole city was still in mourning, and all of these little individual tragedies kept coming. No one got a break.  
Imagine the cold as a beast. They used to, in some of the northern countries. The cold was a wolf. A wolf coming to drag you away from your hearth and your home and your life. Even warmth was no guarantee against it. Death was coming for you, with teeth of ice. You could be beloved, you could be someone's mum, and it'd still come for you.  
But what if death is lonely- no, really. What if death is lonely, and all of this grim reaping is just a way of making it feel all right for a while? Then, your souls or your spirits or what have you go on to their great reward, and death is all alone again. Imagine the coldest you've ever felt. Now, imagine feeling that way forever.  
(“Huh.”)  
So, I'm at the party, and I'm trying to cheer myself up. I'm drinking a bit, smoking a bit of the stuff that's around; I'm on the pull. Anthea goes off to mingle, and I talk to a couple of other likely people. I start to think that she's forgotten about me, but then she comes back, and we get to talking about sex.  
(“As one does.”)  
Well, I'm twenty-one, twenty-two remember. It's the whole world to you, then. I mean, not to everyone- some don't give a fuck, so to speak, at any point in their life- but it was to me. The way another person felt- I mean, not just the pink bits, but the whole person. You can find out a lot about someone in bed, and back then, when it was all still exciting and new to me, the fucking and the magic, it was like a drug. I don't know how it comes up, but we start talking about AIDS- and, well, it's a whole other world. In the span of time it took me to go from wanking alone in my bedroom-  
(“Nice.”)  
-s'true, though- to having actual sex with actual people, AIDS had gone from the new plague to something almost quaint.  
(“In the United States, maybe.”)  
True. Yes. What I mean to say is that I should have been more afraid than I was. Dangerous things don't stop being dangerous because you find a way to hide the evidence and forget.  
(“Did she say something to make you think she might be hiding something?”)  
Not about that, no. I caught a weird vibe- but like I said, I was young, full of myself, keen to get off. She says she doesn't feel well, and she wants to go home, and can I walk her? I thought it was an excuse, to get me to come home with her. Either way, she lives close enough to mine, so I say, yeah. Yeah, darling- I'll walk you home.  
Her building's horrible. The elevator's broken, and there's piss all over the stairs. There's racist graffiti on the walls and a terrible smell that's gone beyond the air, into the paint and tile. I ask her what it is, and she tells me that I don't want to know. I insist that I do.  
She says: “Yeah, you would. That's you: never flinching. Never turning away.”  
Then, she tells me that about six months earlier, she and Sara (mother?- child?- friend?- girlfriend?) noticed the smell and called the police. When someone finally came, they hauled away the remains of two tramps wrapped in a curtain.  
“In plastic bags,” she says, “Lots of plastic bags.”  
We go into her apartment. She puts on some Iggy Pop, gives me a drink, tells me that Ray told her lots about me. Good things, she says with a giggle.  
I remember Sara, and I ask who she is.  
“My roommate,” says Anthea.  
I ask where she is.  
“Away,”says Anthea, but there has to be more to it.  
(“There usually is.”)  
That's when I remember Ray talking about Sara and Anthea. It's a meaningful 'and'. It takes a bit, but I get the story out of her: she and Sara had a row, Sara moved out while they're reevaluating things, and Anthea's been angry and so, so lonely.  
I understand. I really do. But it's insulting, being someone's consolation prize. Especially when you're young and think you're a bloody sex god. I make a bit of a tit of myself, with the post-adolescent pouting, and then I leave. Well, I take the bottle she poured my drink from. Then, I leave.  
The place is like a bloody maze. I thought these mid-century buildings were supposed to be easy to navigate, but it probably doesn't help that I'm a bit drunk, and a bit stoned, and a bit hurt. The smell from that flat seems to be getting worse, even though I could swear I'm walking in the opposite direction. That's when I see a little girl, just standing there, in the hallway. I ask her her name (Shona), and what the matter is. She says:  
“A smelly man came in through the window, and hugged my mommy, and now, she's all cold. She won't talk to me, and she's on the floor.”  
I ask her to show me where she lives, and she leads me there. I tell her to wait outside while I check on her mum. The poor woman can't have been dead for more than a couple of hours, but when I touch her, she's ice cold. It's not natural. It's something nasty.  
Shona asks if her mum's all right. I can only answer that no, she's not. Shona asks if she's gone to be with Jesus. I can only say 'Yes'.  
I don't know what else to do, so I take her over to Anthea's. Anthea tells me to fuck off, but then she sees Shona, hears the story. She's no kinder to me, but she warms up for Shona, takes her in, this child she's never met.  
(“What else would she do?”)  
I'm not trying to make her out to be some kind of saint. Half an hour earlier, she was ready to betray the woman she loved with a stranger. She wasn't extraordinary. She was just a person. We can be cold or we can be warm. Most people are both, switch back and forth.  
I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I find myself walking toward the flat where the bodies were found. The lock is pathetic; I pick it with a bent paper clip. Once I'm inside, I start to feel like a real prat. Christ, it's freezing. It's the kind of cold that hits you like a blow, the kind that leaves a bruise and makes you bleed. I put my arms around myself, just to- Shit, I don't know. What am I trying to prove? That's when I hear the voice. This voice that sounds like a pencil sharpener in hell, saying:  
“Hold me.”  
Fuck. It's dead of the living night. Fuck.  
“What's your name?” I demand, “Tell me!” You have to keep ghosts talking. Especially the ones that are angry, or hungry, or just needy. Make them think like they did when they were alive, still human. Make them remember.  
“Please,” he rumbles, then, “Jack,” then, “So cold,” shaking, shivering, “Nobody cares.”  
“Hold you?” I almost laugh. I shake my head. “You poor dead bastard.” I sigh. “All right.”  
The man smells like someone took a shit in a knacker's yard. He's cold as- fuck-  
(“You're shivering.”)  
No, I'm not. He's so cold. It must be shit being dead.  
He says: “Not so cold.” And he thanks me. Fuck. He thanks me.  
And then, he's gone. He goes through me like the winter wind. It goes all the way down, and I can't stop shaking. I shake all the way down the hall, back to Anthea's. I don't know what I'm doing. I can't even describe how I feel. Knocking on her door feels like trying to swim in treacle. Those seconds before she answers are like years; I feel them aging me. She comes to the door, and before she even speaks, I tell her to shut up, and please hold me. And she does.


End file.
